230 Travels in Italy 



convinced that a city would be much more striking and more 

 admired that had varied Hnes instead of uniform ones. Circles^ 

 semi-circleS; crescents^ semi-elipses^ squares, semi-squares, and 

 compounds composed of these, mixed with the common oblongs, 

 would give a greater air of grandeur and magnificence. The 

 most splendid object I have seen at Turin is the staircase and 

 saloon in the chateau contiguous to the royal palace. There is 

 nothing at Versailles, except the gallery, to be compared with it. 

 The front of this edifice is fine, and the whole does honour to 

 Juvara. This morning I should have delivered my letters, but 

 am unlucky. The Marchese de Palavicino, president of the 

 agrarian society, and Signore Bissatti, the secretary of it, are 

 both in the country. Signore Capriata, the president en second, 

 I met with, but he is no practical farmer; he has been obliging 

 enough, however, to promise me an introduction to some persons 

 who are conversant with agriculture. Meeting with these dis- 

 appointments, I began to fear I might want the intelligence that 

 was necessary to my design; and be in that ineligible situation 

 of seeing only the outsides of houses, and knowing nothing of 

 the persons within. With time thus on my hands, I inquired 

 for a bookseller, and was directed to Signore Briolo, who prints 

 the memoirs of all the learned bodies here; among others, those 

 of the agrarian society, which I bought, and afterwards turning 

 over, found that I made a pretty conspicuous figure in one 

 written by the Cavaliere di Capra, colonel of the regiment of 

 Tortona, on the size of farms. He is a bitter enemy to large 

 ones; not content with strictures on Piedmont, he presses 

 England into his service, and finds it necessary to refute me, 

 as I appear in the translation of Monsieur Freville, from which 

 he quotes passages which I never wrote. I wished to assure the 

 author that it was the French translator and not the English 

 farmer that he had refuted. I laughed very hearty with Signore 

 Capriata at this adventure of the memoirs. In the evening to 

 the opera; the theatre is a fine one, though not the principal; 

 the house nearly full, yet all the world is in the country. 



2'jth. The Cavaliere Capra having seen Signore Capriata, I 

 this morning received a visit from him : I was glad of an oppor- 

 tunity to remark to him that he had quoted passages erroneously 

 from my Political Arithmetic. He said he was sorry he should 

 misunderstand me; and beginning at once to declaim against 

 great farms, I begged to remark that my opinion was exactly 

 the same at present as it had always been, that the size of farms 

 should be left absolutely free. He was violent against great 



